#suspensions design

[designercasket]

Decking - Contemporary Patio An illustration of a sizable, modern backyard patio with decking and no cover

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

btw if you write a teen character with any kind of powers they better do some dumb shit with those powers or I'm unsuspending my disbelief

[prokopetz]

I'm normally happy to grant video game worldbuilding nearly unlimited suspension of disbelief, but some RPGs seem determined to make that difficult. Like, I'll be playing a game where human civilisation apparently consists exclusively of small fortified villages isolated from each other by vast stretches of trackless, monster-infested wilderness, with the villages' inhabitants rarely (if ever) venturing beyond the walls and non-village-dwellers having a life expectancy measured in minutes, and I'll think "well, clearly this is a gameplay abstraction, or possibly some sort of metaphor" – but then the game's plot seizes me by the shoulders and looks me in the eye and says "nothing you've just seen is a gameplay abstraction or a metaphor; here are multiple long-winded cutscenes and thousands of words of supplemental lore establishing that the narrative critically depends on the depicted setting being 100% literal", and I'll be like, all right, you know what? Fuck you. Where do they get their food? Who's minting the universally accepted currency? Why do they all have the same accent?

[ed13d1]

the monsters will haunt each other

[brainrotcharacters]

Have a romp in a Honda Odyssey now and fix your marital disagreements today!

[diana-andraste]

RotaryRock, fifth iteration by François-Xavier Saint-Georges

[spirit-lanterns]

Maybe in android au, the “garbage” or “unsalvageable” slowly piece by piece, circuit by circuit get fixed? That way there won’t be duplicate Kafka’s, Himekos, Jades, Yukons, etc. At least for story telling purposes I am definitely not against having an army of milfs.

-🥛

I think to make things simpler, androids can vary in appearances which separate them from other models. An example of this is that Kafka is an artillery android that uses the tall female model and has all the functions that every artillery android has (plus a few added features at the expenses of her buyer). However, despite sharing the same model as hundreds of others, the appearances of androids may vary, depending on the customer.

Customers who buy androids can have them custom designed with an added expense. Kafka and other androids who have been custom designed, will be unique amongst other androids of their type.

So yes, there won’t be any other duplicates of the Android! HSR women, unless someone purposely designs another version of them to look exactly the same. But who would do that….

[sillyfairygarden]

cleoough (psst if u keep seeing the wip going around, the final piece has been finished :])

[limelocked]

Guy who gets isekaied into an omegaverse world, it’s not even sexy

It’s a slice of life that opens every story with some form of “living in the background of some smut novel/an omegaverse reality/a BL book that swung too close to the sun is always [adjective related to the story at hand]” then he would continue with the weird shit that’s treated entirely normal like finding himself in the red light district and having to learn about secondary gender specific kink gear or he finds a Main Character TM having pheromone problems while shopping and has to debate if they have a partner and if helping here will be detrimental to future safety or run into a group of alpha teens that look like delinquents but they’re actually all just on edge and need very much to patrol this area around their one sick friend

This guy has the full suburban family and one of his uncles kids were just found out to be a secondary sex impossible for the parents to produce so there’s Drama and Gossip flying everywhere

[anim-ttrpgs]

The Blacked Out Skill n Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Many RPGs incorporate elements of mystery and intrigue, but Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy puts it right on the character sheet!

The Blacked Out skill is one of the 19 core stats that all investigators have in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, but the difference is, it’s blacked out.

[Here it is as seen in the rulebook currently, and right below, the Technology skill so you know what a normal skill description looks like.]

Internally, this is referred to as “the blacked out skill” or “the [redacted] skill” as it’s been often coined by playtesters and fans.

During character creation when a player asks the GM “what does this skill do”, the spiel is that it’s a real stat that you can put points into or take points out of, but you don’t know what it does. If your character is the type of person to invest a bunch of points into a mysterious unknown skill, then do so. If they are the type to take points out of a mysterious unknown skill, then do so. You won’t know if you made the right choice until it comes up during play.

I know what it does, but you don’t. You’ll have to buy the rulebook to find out. You can get the prerelease version, along with a ton of other stuff, for just $5 on our patreon right now.

You can also visit our website to find the link to download the free demo version of the rulebook along with a free starter adventure module, and find the invite link to our TTRPG Book Club discord server where everyone nominates indie TTRPGs, votes on what to play, reads&plays them, and discusses!

[reds-skull]

Today I decided to be brave and try and sketch out how I imagine the motorcycles would look for the Cyberknights AU

Putting a horse head on a bike was harder than I thought it would... but for the literal first time drawing one, I think I did alright

Also redesigned Gaz because I hated his previous one, now he looks much cooler (and there's more emphasis on the Aether tech he uses as an Aether expert)

[littlethingwithfeathers]

I'm grumpy about Silent Hill again...

TW for discussions of suicide, self harm, abuse (both parent to child and amongst peers) and general spookiness. Y'know... the usual Silent Hill rigmarole of trauma and despair. Also be warned that I'm going to spoil a lot of the Silent Hill series, in particular Silent Hill 2 and the Short Message game that just came out. ***

So... one of my most popular posts out there is this one. It's about Pyramid head and the loss of subtlety in media. And I couldn't help but feel like we hadn't moved an inch from when I posted that back in... *checks date on post* hrrk. my bones... 2017. I'm going to die soon. Anyway. Today I watched Second Wind do a run of the short, free-to-play Silent Hill: Short Message. I admittedly had a good bit of trepidation going in just because of the marketing. Which, for all of you marketing majors out there, that is called "Not a good sign." Marketing should make you want to play a game... especially if you're a fan of the series already. But this... it was a bit of a wet blanket, largely due to the fact that it spoiled a lot of the focus of the game. It basically said "this is a game about how bullying and being chronically online is real bad. We're gonna be spooky about it now." And... straining to push aside how incredibly reductive that is... why give it away? Why say it out loud? Why did you tell us what you are doing? Can you imagine Silent Hill 2 if we'd known it was about James killing his wife from the jump? We didn't. We hadn't the first clue. We knew nothing other than that he was looking for her and she was maybe dead? But we didn't know how... possibly lung cancer or TB given that she had the most pointed coughing sequence since the movie Tombstone. And hey... the last game had someone looking for a loved one too. Maybe that's the deal with Silent Hill. Who knows? No one did at that point. It was still a big old mystery for the most part. And then the E3 trailer... like there's the weird pretty lady in jail? But what's she talking about? Who the fuck is Mary? Is that... his wife? Well then who the hell is Ms. Miniskirt? No wait... is that his wife in the VHS tape? What the hell is going on? Oh look gameplay! And... a little girl? And a weird guy with a gun... This soundtrack slaps. I'm gonna go see if it's up on Napster yet. (this was 2001... again... my bones etc) I remember combing over low-res copies of that video for HOURS when it came out. Why are the nurses different? It's not snowing? Who are all these people... And why do they all sound like they put ketamine in their coffee. It was like a great big puzzle to work out and we had a ball theorizing and researching so when it came out we were HYPE. And that was largely because in short... we knew SOME things at release. Fog. Nurses. Big stick. Weird people. Banger soundtrack. Dead (but probably not) wife. And we presumed or supposed more... cult activity? New beasties? Radio maybe? But we effectively knew nothing about the plot. And the best part was, while they had a solid hook (Find dead lady who we love so huggy buggy much) and instant intrigue (Angela in the cemetery being weirder than a film by David Lynch), and a very familiar setting (we may have improved draw distance on the PS2, but we don't have to use it!), we still didn't really know what was going on. The plot was essentially unfolding out of a black box. Silent Hill 2 was quite content to be a slower burn than trying to boil the Lake Superior with a signal flare. You don't even see the main "villain" Pyramid Head until a few hours in and, as I pointed out in that other post, there's no flashy cut scene to introduce him and go WOOOOOO SCARYYYYY. He's just chillin' behind some prison bars (which that totes is normal in an apartment complex) and staring at you like I stare at the inside of my fridge when I really would like some cheese to materialize.

And then... like we're not even really sure what the hell is going on for the longest time. We meet our wife's hot twin with the key to a strip club and she keeps getting killed over and over... and things keep getting increasingly rapey and lewd in a way that's just uncomfortable more than anything... But even at the end. Even with the big reveal of "You killed your wife." they still don't ever explicitly state "And you killed her because you couldn't have sex with her anymore." It wasn't until you finished the game, and talked to someone else about it, or let your brain cook on it for a bit that you went... heyyyy... he's a horndog! (In fact... if I'm going to chide SH2 for anything it's that right at the very VERY end they tried to frame James's actions as understandable because the woman who was dying and frightened and in pain was mean to him. Yes, being a caretaker is hard. But Christ... pick a topic for discussion.) But contrast all that with Short Message. The marketing and such all said out loud "THIS IS ABOUT BULLYING" so even going in... I was already like "yep. The bully is probably us, but we had reasons because we have to be complicated and you aren't allowed to make the player feel bad" And lo was I correct. There was no... intrigue. I was never curious about the character or the people around her because I knew this story. They already told me what story they were telling so I could practically sing along, especially as a millennial that had to grow up watching little videos and skits in school about the evils of bullying. And when you are going to tell a trope-ish story, and you tell the audience what the trope is, it becomes "say the line" writ large. This isn't me advocating for super twisty unexpected plot arcs (looking at you, Supernatural). Far from it. You absolutely should tell a story in such a way that the audience understands how you got from point A to point Z, even if there are some surprises along the way (See Sixth Sense for that masterclass). Rather, what I'm missing from this (and frankly a lot of the Silent Hill games and honestly... media in general these days) is a sense of restraint. A sense of trust in their audience to "get it." They can't just plonk us in the fog with a radio and a stick and say "You're here to find your best friend/dog/cousin/wife/business partner. Good luck. Here's a weirdo to prattle cryptically at you in order to unsettle you immediately. Bye!" No! They have to tell us what kind of story they're telling and what themes are important. They can't just... give us a Silent Hill Game and trust that we know what to do with it. It's... insulting frankly. Especially as a longtime fan of the franchise who remembers when they did trust us and they did have faith in their work. I will say this in compliment to Short Message. The environment design was pretty cool. Especially the sticky-note hallways... they looked like leaves... and sometimes teeth... and like tightly packed bones in an ossuary. It didn't... say anything really. But it looked cool. And you can't go wrong with Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack. But... while I'm on the subject of design. Y'all. An animate sakura tree in an oversized hoodie is not scary. But bless you for at least having the restraint to not make her Pyramid Head.

[ohno-the-sun]

I cannot express how much I love the human bois I live and thrive off of their beauty

I also am in love with the human boys I will defend and love every human au aaaa

Here are some mad scientist au doodles as humans cause why not

[nanowrimo]

30 Covers, 30 Days 2023: Day 12

Representing day 12 is The Shell Game by YWP Writer Stella Holt, and it's a wonderful Thriller/Suspense novel. This cover was designed by the amazing returning designer, Victoria Pickett!

The Shell Game

A chef. A range officer. A museum curator.

Three people.

One spy.

Jamie McNamara is a bounty hunter but she doesn’t hunt people. Not after a job-gone-wrong three years ago. So when she’s approached with a mission to find Derek Knox, a rogue sleeper agent, and get him back to his employers, she fears the contractor knows more about her past than she’d like. But unfortunately, he pays well, and she’s broke.

She accepts the job, but quickly realizes there’s more to it than she thought. The rogue agent is currently hiding under one of three potential covers. Her task is to find out which two are innocents, and which one is the spy.

But the deeper Jamie gets into the job, the more questions arise. At first, all three people appear harmless. But then not only does Jamie find questionable connections with one of them, all three of their innocence is put in doubt.

There’s only one spy. But what if the other two aren’t all they seem, either?

About the Author

When not stressing out about how few hours are in the day, Stella Holt loves finding beauty in Creation; from the mystique of a caliginous night, to the simple wonder of existence.

About the Designer

Victoria is a recovering design educator working in the Mayor's Office of Urban Analytics and Innovation at the City of Cleveland. She made the leap from academia to city government almost a year ago. She works with data analysts in data visualization and creates infographics. She enjoys contributing to a team whose work is doing good. This is her fifth year designing a cover for NaNoWriMo.

Cover Design Process:

This year. we gave designers the optional prompt to explain their design process for the cover! Here's Victoria's:

The title immediately made me think of each character peeking out from under a shell in the classic shell game. But I wanted to push that idea and created three silhouettes in hotel windows with awnings that look like shells. 

[shibarylover]

1000 ways to love

[j-2b]

The legendary detective agency of the great detective the sleeping Kogoro. Surrounding him are the Kid Killer Edogawa Conan and and the disciple Tooru Amuro.